CLASS 4

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CLASS 4

• Music 14 Contemporary Music

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Class announcements

• Reminder start thinking about performances!
• If you think you might be able to do a
  performance in Class 7 or Class 8, let me know

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In the first week of class

• I mentioned that serialism became a very
  influential strain of 20th century classical
  music
• Well return to Europe today and learn about some
  composers who took that path, as well as
  composers who were pioneers of electronic music

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Milton Babbitt, Who Cares if You Listen?

• Deviation from this tradition is bound to
  dismiss the contemporary music of which I have
  been talking into "isolation." Nor do I see how
  or why the situation should be otherwise. Why
  should the layman be other than bored and puzzled
  by what he is unable to understand, music or
  anything else? It is only the translation of this
  boredom and puzzlement into resentment and
  denunciation that seems to me indefensible.

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Babbitt continued

• After all, the public does have its own music,
  its ubiquitous music music to eat by, to read
  by, to dance by, and to be impressed by. Why
  refuse to recognize the possibility that
  contemporary music has reached a stage long since
  attained by other forms of activity? The time has
  passed when the normally well-educated man
  without special preparation could understand the
  most advanced work in, for example, mathematics,
  philosophy, and physics.

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Babbitt continued

• Advanced music, to the extent that it reflects
  the knowledge and originality of the informed
  composer, scarcely can be expected to appear more
  intelligible than these arts and sciences to the
  person whose musical education usually has been
  even less extensive than his background in other
  fields.

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Babbitt continued

• But to this, a double standard is invoked, with
  the words music is music, implying also that
  music is just music. Why not, then, equate the
  activities of the radio repairman with those of
  the theoretical physicist, on the basis of the
  dictum that physics is physics.

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Some questions

• Babbitt is drawing parallels here between music
  and science. Are these apt parallels?
• Scientists how are scientific disciplines like
  or unlike music?
• Should music be research?

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Questions (continued)

• On the other hand, is it possible that there
  should be some sort of shelter for music that is
  accomplished but unpopular?
• Would music classes be better taught by people
  like me (an avant-garde composer), or by someone
  else?

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Some background

• Babbitts music builds on serialist processes
• Throughout the middle of the century and
  continuing (to some extent) to the present day,
  serialists and post-serialists take refuge in the
  academy

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What is modernism?

• The ties Babbitt makes between music and science
  are typical of modernist attitudes
• Progress is an important goal (in music and
  elsewhere)
• Progress through science and reason
• It is possible to understand the world
• And, thus, possible to really understand music

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Without meaning to pick on Babbitt too much

• There is something deeply problematic about these
  attitudes (criticized for being Eurocentric)
• And yet it is hard to understand contemporary
  classical music without understanding modernism

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Schoenberg on his invention of serialism

• I have today made a discovery that will ensure
  the supremacy of German music for the next
  hundred years. Why is this a modernist position?
• In fact, why is serialism itself modernist?

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Theodor Adorno, quoted in Ross

• New music has taken upon itself all the
  darkness and guilt of the world. All its
  happiness comes in the perception of misery, all
  its beauty comes in the rejection of beautys
  illusion.

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In the wake of WWII

• Modernist attitudes become a way to wipe the
  slate clean
• Summer music courses in Darmstadt, Germany become
  important place for composers to share ideas
• Ironically (given that the summer courses are in
  Germany and Schoenbergs main reason for creating
  serialism was explicitly nationalist), modernism
  becomes a way to avoid nationalism

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Heres what I mean.

• In World War II, the Nazis used the music of
  Beethoven and Richard Strauss for political
  purposes
• After WWII, composers began to think about how to
  avoid having that happen again
• Aim to create a sort of trans-national music that
  could not be used for nationalist purposes

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So Darmstadt

• Becomes HQ for this new trans-national style
• Ironically, this trans-national style is based
  around post-serialist ideas (more on this later)
• The so-called purity of serialism (free from
  references to other music, and therefore other
  ideologies) seen as an antidote

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But

• Serialism is a German invention!
• And it comes with plenty of ideological baggage!
• Its true that the Nazis didnt like it, but it
  was supposed to ensure German dominance, and it
  does come with a set of assumptions

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An interesting characteristic of much modern art
music is

• The belief that music can somehow be neutral
• Much later, English free jazz guitarist Derek
  Bailey will describe his music as
  non-idiomatic, by which he means it connects to
  no idiom, or genre
• Is this possible?

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So

• In my reading, at least, Darmstadt didnt really
  avoid nationalism at all

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Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007)

• German
• Highly influential throughout second half of 20th
  century
• Modernist to the core

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Stockhausen on techno

• I wish those musicians would not allow
  themselves any repetitions, and would go faster
  in developing their ideas or their findings,
  because I dont appreciate at all this permanent
  repetitive language. It is like someone who is
  stuttering all the time, and cant get words out
  of his mouth. I think musicians should have very
  concise figures and not rely on this fashionable
  psychology. I dont like psychology whatsoever
  using music like a drug is stupid.

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(continued)

• One shouldnt do that music is the product of
  the highest human intelligence, and of the best
  senses, the listening senses and of imagination
  and intuition. And as soon as it becomes just a
  means for ambiance, as we say, environment, or
  for being used for certain purposes, then music
  becomes a whore, and one should not allow that
  really one should not serve any existing demands
  or in particular not commercial values (From
  http//www.stockhausen.org/ksadvice.html)

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This echoes Babbitt because

• Description of musical creations as findings
  echoes the language of science
• Of belief that music should not serve commercial
  demands (and that it should therefore be separate
  from the demands of mass audiences)

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And indeed

• Stockhausen pursues music with an almost
  scientific fervor throughout his career

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Listening log 15 Stockhausen, Mikrophonie I
(1964)

• What, exactly, is going on here?
• What is the form like?

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What it is

• Tam tam (large gong) struck, scratched, and
  rubbed with glass, cardboard, plastic, rubber,
  etc.
• In addition, the performers amplify the gong with
  microphones
• The movements of these microphones are carefully
  scripted

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This parallels

• Vareses Integrales, in a way, because it
  explores sound in a physical way
• That is, not only do you hear the gong, you hear
  the way the microphones interact with the gong
• Movements by these microphones cause shifts in
  perspective, as if different parts of the gong
  are getting closer and further away

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Form

• 33 independent musical structures
• There is set of rules that determines how each of
  these 33 moments will interact
• This is yet another form that rejects narrativity
• Breaks music into a form thats (incidentally)
  somewhat reminiscent of TV news

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Pierre Boulez

• 1925 (France) -
• Composer and conductor
• Like Stockhausen, became an important voice in
  classical music while still in his 20s

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Total serialism

• Boulez, Stockhausen, Babbitt and many other
  composers write using techniques designed to
  build on the possibilities of twelve-tone music
• They make the system even more complex
• Boulez in particular composes using total
  serialism, in which other parameters besides
  just pitch (duration, volume, etc.) are serialized

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Listening log 15 Boulez, Piece from Structures,
Book 1

• How do you follow this piece? What elements do
  you pay attention to that allow you to make sense
  of it?

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Musique Concrete

• In the early 20th century, there are sporadic
  attempts to explore electronic music (example
  Russolo)
• But composers are limited by a lack of technology
  with which to make that music

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Technology

• As first half of century progresses, though,
  technology to make electronic music emerges
• Microphone
• Tape machines (1930s-40s)

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Musique Concrete means

• Concrete music
• Music that uses recordings of the sounds of
  everyday life (that is, non-musical sounds)
• Today we would say that this music often has a
  ghostly, space-y feel
• (Low-fidelity recordings, often drowning in
  reverb)

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Pierre Schaeffer

• 1910 (France) - 1995
• Not a professional musician per se
• Was a telecommunications engineer early in career
• In 1940s, he begins to experiment with records -
  playing them at different speeds, playing them
  backwards, etc.

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Schaeffer (continued)

• Begins to combine recorded, manipulated sounds
  into collages
• Also begins to explore attack and decay

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Listening log 17 Schaeffer, Etude aux chemans de
fer

• If you dont speak French what does this sound
  like?
• If you do speak French how does Schaeffer use
  the sound materials?
• Everyone how are the sounds arranged?

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Etude

• This is Schaeffers first official composition
• It uses the sounds of trains
• Like many early electronic works, it is more of a
  study than a real piece (the word etude means
  something like exercise

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Experimentation with electronics

• Throughout the late 1940s and the 1950s, others
  were experimenting with the possibilities of
  electronic music--in the U.S., Canada and
  elsewhere in Europe

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Interesting developments

• The recording of the piece is the piece, not a
  representation of it
• That is, composers of electronic music dont have
  to depend on performers to realize, or translate,
  what they write on paper

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(continued)

• This possibility impacts pop music, where much
  time and energy is spent creating aspects of the
  music that may not be reproduced in live
  performance
• That is, in pop music, recording and editing
  become their own instruments, in a way

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(continued)

• Also, pop music now often features prerecorded
  backing tracks, and even, sometimes, prerecorded
  vocal tracks
• In this context, live performance becomes a
  theatrical spectacle, not an occasion to play
  music
• Musique concrete anticipates all this by posing
  strong questions regarding the 1-to-1
  relationship between recording and live
  performance

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Also

• Musique concrete anticipates the use of sampling
  in pop music

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And

• Schaeffer (perhaps in part because of his
  non-musical background) encouraged musicians to
  re-think what sounds are musical and which are
  non-musical

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Back to the Futurists

• Russolo talked about a music of noises
• Well, here it is
• In a way, musique concrete is simply a response
  to the possibilities of the technology used to
  create it
• But, in another way, it is response to a world
  that is increasingly loud

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Back to the Futurists (continued)

• Other composers of early electronic music,
  particularly Vladimir Ussachevsky and Otto
  Luening in the U.S., manipulate the sounds of
  musical instruments rather than the sounds of
  everyday life. But the latter remains much more
  popular.

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Influence on successive generations

• Musique concrete becomes a touchstone for younger
  composers who take the idea of using sounds from
  everyday life and attempt to write for acoustic
  instruments using this idea
• More on this in the next lecture

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As you noticed from your reading

• There was another very important composer
  (besides Stockhausen and Boulez) associated with
  Darmstadt who we didnt discuss today
• That composer is John Cage, an American who had a
  completely different aesthetic

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Cage and FLUXUS Composers

• Also, in a way, make irrelevant the question of
  historical path that we discussed in the first
  week

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Also in the next class

• UCSD composer Ian Power performs his piece I Seem
  to Be a Verb